As a newly inducted monk tasked with wandering the valleys of the Kiso river in search of enlightenment—or at the very least tasty snacks—I take on a solemn vow of muteness. This is not my intention—I set out to be Convivial Monk Gregarious The Taller, but sometimes your path is chosen not by, but for you.

Last night’s accommodation was Magome Furusato Gakkou, an old school house converted into a hostel of sorts. The ambience was less scholastic and more monastic (hence the overnight ordainment to the order). The seven house rules I was obliged to read before checking in could have been summarised in one: don’t be a dick. But the verbosity was clearly doing its job, as everyone’s behaviour was impeccable, to an excessive and perhaps performative extent. Eye contact was mostly avoided. No one walked—which might dislodge a floorboard and elicit a creak—but instead shuffled in their indoor flip-flops. Conversation in the dormitories was non-existent, and in the common areas they were a subsonic whisper. Guests entered the lounge, made and drank their coffee, washed, dried and re-placed their cups where they found them, and left without a trace. If a toilet flushed once I didn’t hear it.

As I take my shoes from the entrance hall rack and crouch to put them on I see dried leaves blowing in tight circles outside the front door. I put on an extra jacket and a bobble hat. I eat breakfast perched on a street corner while I wait for Hillbilly Coffee to open. In those ten early-morning minutes I see a dozen tourists heading up the hill. It is cold but the sun is hitting my face, balancing the equation. I follow the crowd up the steep cobbled path and enter the cafe. It is no more than 16 meters squared but there are eight people inside plus two staff. Only the staff are from Japan. I order a tea and a pain au chocolat, in homage to my lands of birth and adoption, take a seat, and wait patiently. By the time I finish my tea (powerful) and pastry (heated up and therefore amazing) a further dozen customers, none of whom are Japanese, have come and gone. As I leave and walk up the hill through the traditional, immaculately preserved/restored post town (post towns are those established or “posted” along these trade routes during the Edo period as places for travellers to stop and rest) I pass another ten tourists. Pretty soon I’m in fresh morning forest of pine, acer and cypress, cobbled pathways twisting their way gently uphill. Between Magome and Tsumago there are three things you will see at semi-regular ~100m intervals: a bell by the side of the path; a shrine of some description; and a group of two to ten tourists. At one point I approach a barn, smoke and steam billowing through the open doorway, clearly a sign of some human activity going on in there somewhere. As I walk past I glimpse through the gaps of the oren and see upwards of fifteen tourists sat around low tables drinking tea. I keep on walking.

After about the third or fourth tourist encounter I gave up trying to figure out the appropriate language and words to use to acknowledge them with. Japanese felt affected; English felt vaguely colonial. It was then that I took up my vow of silence and greeted each passerby with a smile and gentle bow thereafter. Leave them to struggle for the right words, I figure.

Abundance of tourists aside, the walk downhill from the Magome Pass to Tsumago is perhaps the most beautiful, tranquil and mystical stretch of forest I have ever walked through. Every square inch felt contrived to elicit awe, to a comical degree. I stand still and look around me and laugh at the ridiculous show: towering slender trees; leaves of all autumnal shades; rocks in lush gowns of bright green moss; streams rippling to aural and visual delight. I flick each bell with a gloved forefinger as I pass. Each has a different pitch and timbre.

Magome and Tsumago are apparently in competition to see which can appear the most authentically representative of an Edo-era post town, and each in their own way. Magome is hyper-polished and chintzy. If you told me a team of fifty volunteers comes out every night to sweep and dust and work every surface to a glossy Pledge lacquer I would not be surprised—the place shines in ways it shouldn’t. I see a couple of workmen replacing two loose street cobbles with painted papier maché stones and airfix glue and they look at me suspiciously, like they know I’m on to them. Which I am. Boutiques are well lit and well stocked with generic goods whose only purpose is to evoke an average perception of ancient Japanese life. Tsumago eschews fairytale homeliness and opts for a darker, moodier aesthetic. Every panel of wood has the same near-black to dark brown vertical gradient applied. Shops are so dark inside I have no idea what they’re selling. Oren shimmer in the wind menacingly. Tourists loiter like they’re waiting for the 11:00 performance of the spectacular and authentic but non-fatal Samurai sword fight, after which tips are collected, perhaps in an upturned Samurai helmet, and onlookers are invited to pose next to the purported victor and hold his sword that wouldn’t cut butter. After Tsumago the tourists thin out and locals reassert numerical dominance. I reach Nagiso and head to the nearest restaurant. The place is almost empty and the waitress offers me the table of my choice. For the second day in a row I’m tempted to sit on the raised floor at a low table, but unaware of the specific protocols and customs I get cold feet and sit at a western table instead. The waitress presumptively brings me a menu handwritten in English. Every poster, decoration, piece of furniture, appliance, contraption, device and item of stationery in the restaurant is from the late seventies. I order and wait. A group of six workmen enter and sit at one of the low tables. I observe their actions closely out of the corner of my eye and take mental notes. One of the workmen takes off his boots and I notice he’s wearing the same black football socks I have back home. The sock with an L on it is on his left foot, and the sock with an R on it is on his right foot. I can only see two workmen; one of them sits in seiza, the other sits cross-legged. For someone who can only sit in seiza for a maximum of twelve seconds this is reassuring. Another diner in the far corner shovels his food in to his mouth like he’s in a rush, even though he isn’t. This is also reassuring. The only item in this restaurant not from 1976 is a 40-inch plasma screen TV, which is announcing the daily news. There is an incongruous series of cuts from an official-looking woman wearing a suit and standing at lectern, to images of a black bearcub running across fields and up a persimmon tree. (Note to self: bears can climb persimmon trees.) I understand nothing, even with the subtitles on, and fail to form a connection between the clips. Outside the midday jingle plays. It’s no less creepy today than it was yesterday.

As sleeping logistics dictate I take the train to Nojiri. (Don’t worry folks, I’ll be taking the train right back to Nagiso to continue the walk tomorrow morning.) I have two hours to kill before I can check in so I head to the only café in town. The owners of Coffee Katana choose to express themselves through the café’s interior decoration, apparently. Model cars, wind-up toys and Transformers-like figures line the countertop from end to end, leaving space here and there for jars of exotic coffee beans. There is an adjoining garage with glass sliding doors through which I can see four motorbikes and one moped. One of the books propped up against the front window is tilted World Tank Museum, which makes no sense. After the ceremony of ordering and preparing and serving there is a void that I feel the need to fill. I break my vow of silence and ask the owner his favourite bird. “Favourite‽” “Yes.” “Bird‽” “Yes.” “Mine‽” “Yes.” Maybe he thought I got my words mixed up and said bird instead of motorbike, but after a thoughtful pause he proudly says, “enaga”. Before I can even repeat it his wife is typing into her iPad and walking round to show me what the bird looks like, and it looks like the cutest ball of pure white fluff you will ever see. I look up the English translation and it’s the long-tailed bushtit. I snigger to myself. I ask his wife what her favourite bird is and with evident forethought she immediately says “hiyoko”, and within milliseconds shows me a cartoon picture of a bright-yellow baby chick popping out of an egg. The man asks me whether I like birds and I give a non-committal answer. He then asks me my favourite bird and I mispronounce the Japanese word for crow. Years of mental preparation and drilling for this one moment and I blow it. On the positive side this leads on to a beautiful conversation in which the couple explain through words and mime the role of stress and intonation in Japanese as a way of disambiguating words that otherwise sound the same. They give the example of hashi, which can mean chopsticks, bridge and edge. Chopsticks has a rising intonation; edge has a falling intonation; and bridge has a constant intonation. Despite many repetitions I could not tell the difference between the three. I ask the man whom the motorbikes belong to and he says two are his and three belong to his wife. I told him that gives him permission to buy a third and he tells me he already has one in a nearby garage. As I leave I thank him for the Japanese lesson (in Japanese, of course) and he laughs in genuine delight.

My half day of walking ends as I walk in to the low-budget spa resort to the soundtrack of a Japanese muzak version of John Lennon’s Imagine.